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Mom’s Relish Tray

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A relish tray is a great dish to add to the appetizer or dinner table. My mom’s recipe is super simple with veggies, olives, and pickles.

Holiday appetizers can get so complicated. We fool ourselves into thinking that we need to make a big froofroo spread before the bigger froofroo spread we call Thanksgiving dinner.

Times have changed. The appetizers, hors d’oeuvres, amuse-bouches, snack, whatever you want to call them, were always a pretty simple affair when I was growing up. My mom typically made one thing on Thanksgiving for the pre-dinner bite: the relish tray.

I’ve heard that this is perhaps a midwestern tradition. I dunno. To me, it says, “home.”

The relish tray was nothing fancy, just celery and carrot sticks, cut the old-fashioned way, as well as an assortment of olives, pickles, and maybe a few radishes. The cut-glass dish that held them, however, was very fancy. It’s probably smaller than I remember it, but it always exclaimed, “Special!” to me.

We’d snack on these little tidbits while the smell of roast turkey and stuffing drifted throughout the house. And later the dish would rest on the dinner table and perhaps be passed around so folks could add another tidbit or two to their plates.

Consider creating your own relish tray this year, with a few updates:

Mom’s Relish Tray

A relish tray is a great dish to add to the appetizer or dinner table. My mom’s recipe is super simple with veggies, olives, and pickles.

Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Total time: 10 minutesyield varies

Ingredients:

olives – try some different varieties from the olive bar at your local grocer’s

pickles – vary the choices from dill to sweet to spicy, maybe throw in some itty bitty cornichons, too

I have lived in Indiana in all my life. We always have a “relish tray”. It always has some different veggies and usually has some pickles and olives. The olives are always gone very early. That is a tradition that we grew up with and we still do.

We always had onion dip (lipton onion soup and sourcream) chips ( remember when they used to come in two plastic bags in a box?) Celery stuffed with pimento cheese from a jar and a big bowl of black olives which disappeared fast on to all my little cousins fingers. Those were the days…………..

Relish trays were such a part of my extended family holidays that I had almost forgotten about them. What a great reminder! Ours included black and green olives, sweet pickles, dill pickles, pickled herring, and weird pickled cinnamon apple thingys. The carrots and celery were on the seperate “veggie tray” with lots of other veggies. Thanks for the memories!

@Rita @ Creatively Domestic,
The “weird pickled cinnamon apple thingys” were something I had forgotten about until I read this. I LOVED those as a kid. And when I do my shopping tonight, I am going to look for them. It’s time that my kids get to try that little slice of (over-dyed-odd-textured-uniquely-flavored) heaven.

I’m from Ohio (with family in Michigan as well), and we ALWAYS had a relish tray for holiday gatherings when I was growing up. Usually two of them – one for cut veggies, and one for pickles and olives. I had no idea this was more of a Midwestern tradition. And it continues to this day – even when we’re doing a potluck style meal, someone is always designated to bring jars of pickles and olives!

@Jessica, My parents grew up in Long Beach, CA and had parents from OK & FL. I grew up with my grandma’s having a relish tray, but my mom never had one. The first time I hosted Thanksgiving, my dad asked “where’s the olives?!”. I will NEVER forget them again!

I have only seen the relish tray on the internet and I’ve never heard of any people IRL ever having one. My dad’s family used to put out nuts on Thanksgiving or Sundays. My uncle’s family put out kielbasa and I think pickles and growing up I did not understand why you’d put out food before dinner. My mom’s family is strangely void of nearly all “normal” traditions (as an adult I’ve learned that when I tell people about them they look at me funny) and big meals just didn’t happen. If anyone in my mom’s family cooked dinner, there was no way they were making you an appetizer too!

@Michelle, Ah, you must be Polish like me…kielbasa. No holiday was a holiday without it. Although both of parents have passed, I still continue that tradition. And the relish tray is a must…I am also from the Midwest. I think it gave everyone something to snack on before dinner was served.

We always have a relish tray too. Typically two- one for veggies and another for olives/pickles. Always on the pretty cut-glass serving dishes.
This Hoosier hasn’t ever been to a holiday gathering or pitch-in where there wasn’t at least one relish tray. It’s a party staple!

Well I am afraid I am bursting the “Mid-west Relish Tray Bubble”. I’m from New England which is where our entire family has lived since they came over here from Europe 4 or more generations ago and we have always had a Relish Tray. We also usually have a veggie tray, nut tray along with a Kielbasa, Pepperoni, Cheese and Cracker Tray.

It’s really funny to hear people trying to figure out all these fancy appetizer trays for their holiday gatherings while we always stick with the same exact thing. Even the kids under 5 expect to see the Relish Tray along with the other things during get togethers.

We almost always had a relish tray but it was more from my grandmother’s requesting then from my mom. She ALWAYS supplied the sweet pickles and olives for the ‘relish’ tray. Ours usually included cheese cubes and veggies too. She is around 85 and I think the last time we had a family gathering a few months ago she was looking for a pretty bowl to put those sweet pickles in. Sweet pickles almost always make an appearance. 😉 And my husbands grandmother who is in her early 90’s also often provides at least the cheese needed for the relish tray…although for many years her favorite addition was shrimp cocktail…not really for a relish tray but just what she liked to bring. Oh and we are all from the south with the exception of hubby’s grandma she is from the New England area.

I’m in NY and we always had a relish tray. Like the OP, just hearing or reading those words makes me think of my Mom (deceased) and smile. Small sweet pickles and green olives were required, other items were at her discretion.

Oh, and I have one of the little glass bowls for those sweet pickles in my dining room cabinet. 🙂

Nope I grew up on Vancouver Island and we had them, but ours were a slight bit different. Just 2 dividers on one side was normally some type of pickle and on the other side olives. Lots of times we had several on the table and others held types of cheeses cut into cubes and then the other side crackers, or carrots on one side and cucumbers on the other. I love them!

I am from Kansas. Every family gathering had/has a relish tray. It’s separate from the Veggie tray. It usually had pickles of different varieties, pickled beets, both green and black olives, those baby corn things(lol) as my kids call them, and the spiced apple rings. As a child me and all my cousins would sneak in and grab the olives, putting them on our fingers and acting like they were finger nails and then eat them. As an adult I see the kids still sneaking to get them and smile because I realize we never really did sneak successfully. We always have extra jars/cans on hand, as they are the first to go. Great memories!

I never realized this was a Midwest tradition. We never had/have a holiday meal without a relish tray. I served one for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. We still include carrots, celery, radishes, pickles and black olives. I have added sweet pepper slices, cauliflower and broccoli florets.

Overall I would group relish trays as appetizer or hors dourve. Somewhere there may be a distinction between items, I consider relish trays to be plant items that can e served as finger foods. Others add meat, sausages, fish, cheeses, nuts, eggs, and pastry. I have seen all sorts of items of relish trays from different ethnic groups and many share the same or similar items: Just think of these cuisines and I would expect that you can think of 4 or 5 items by each of these nationalities or ethnic groups:
Italian
Polish
German
Jewish
Greek
Middle Eastern
Russian
Scandinavian
South American
Chinese
Korean
Indian
English Isles
French
and on and on

These items are plant based but usually require a utensil or cracker/pita/tostini/cruet to be eaten: sour cream onions and cucumber, brochette, salsa, humus, caponata, and baba ganoush. While I have seen these served along relish trays I refer to them as appetizers because they are animal based: pickled herring w/ or w/o cream sauce, smoked fowl, smoked fish, lox, deviled eggs, pickled eggs, all types of sausages and processed meats.

Never was there a party or special occasion in our family without a relish tray! I carry on the tradition and have several divided dishes that I use for relish trays. My family always served whatever home canned pickled items were on hand along with radishes, green onions, celery, carrots and olives (black & green). I have added to that list for my relish trays and also have shrimp cocktail, cheese balls with crackers, veggie dips and assorted veggies and deviled eggs. I carry on the family tradition and never have a dinner party or special occasion without a relish tray gracing the table!

Having a small family gathering for Daddy’s 90th birthday this Sunday. Among his requests is a “relish tray.” I often put together a crudite tray, sometimes including olives and pickles. This one will be more pickled items.
My dad, nephew and I like hot/spicy items, and I often include those on another dish. So that “wimpy” eaters don’t accidently eat the spicy pickles, I usually make a sign or stand nearby to point out which ones they’ll like best.
I just got the idea to get a red glass relish dish to serve the spicy items. It’s too late for this Sunday, but I’ll be looking at Thrift stores and garage sales to find one for the next time. I saw many on line, so I know red relish dishes are out there waiting to be found by me!

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